The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 49 ............. leaving

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 49 ............. leaving

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

I can’t remember when we were told that mum and dad were selling Lausanne Road and that we were moving to Eltham.

But having sold and bought a few houses I know that after the decision to sell, finding a place and doing the deals can take months.

So as we moved in the March of 1964 they will have begun the process at the start of the New Year but more probably in the winter of 1963.

Now Lausanne Road was all I had known for my entire life.  I went to school in Waller Road and later Samuel Pepys, played in Pepys park and as the years went by I wandered further afield taking in most of Peckham, Nunhead, New Cross and bits of Deptford and even Greenwich.

And after we left I continued to return to go to school and for a while at least would spend weekends with friends.

But looking back that move came at a time when lots of things were changing and I guess there will be many others who also moved out of the area in their teenage years that experienced that similar mix of regret at what was lost with all the excitement of what was to come.

For me it was that difficult time when all the clumsy bits of becoming a teenager were taking over.

So as all the old certainties were ebbing away, I no longer played with toys had stopped reading comics and was given to irrational outbursts at mum over absolutely nothing.

And I have to admit that I was far more a difficult and unpleasant teenager than ever my three sons were and for that I continue to harbour a deep shame.

Part of the problem was that having discarded the toys the comics and the adventures the things which were supposed to effortlessly take their place were slow to surface.

We didn’t have a record player for another year, my dress sense remained appalling and there was no girlfriend on the horizon.  All of which was made worse by that conviction that everyone else was having a better time.

I was unsure exactly what my friends were doing that was different and more exciting but given my own mundane existence that just had to be.

So I suppose I was ready for the move.

Not that much changed for another six months but by the September of ‘64 there was a growing confidence which showed up in what I was wearing and how I saw the world.

And while I still made that daily journey from Eltham to New Cross and would continue to do so till the summer of 1966 I didn’t go back at weekends  and Lausanne Road became just a memory.

But you never quite loose all those things that you grew up with and now I realize just how much of Peckham and New Cross is part of who I am.



Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road